IG community highlights management challenges facing agencies

By Andrew Wagner | Published Thursday, April 19, 2018

A

A

A

Michael Horowitz, Inspector General at the Department of Justice and Allison Lerner, Inspector General at the National Science Foundation, discuss the Council of the Inspectors General report on common management issues throughout the government, and how to tackle their root causes.

Inspectors General are looking to find solutions to agency management challenges. The Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency is digging deep into the management practices of their offices. According to a new report from the council, some common issues can be found throughout the executive branch. Problems include IT management, human capital management, performance management and financial management.

Michael Horowitz, Inspector General at the Department of Justice, and chair of CIGIE, says that several factors led to the prevalence of these issues.

“One was the personnel. Do agencies have sufficient personnel to tackle these challenges? That’s a theme cutting across every single one of the areas,” said Horowitz.

“Grant management, Financial management, all of these issues. you saw themes over and over again. Where agencies were facing challenges in how they accomplished their goals, whether they measured their results, as well as trained their personnel to deal with the challenges.”

CIGIE Vice Chair Allison Lerner, Inspector General at the National Science Foundation, said that several groups of people should read this report.

“The first group of people who we’d really like to see read this report is the American public, so they can see how their tax dollars are spent and how their agencies are operated. Beyond that, agency leadership and congressional stakeholders, this is a great report for them.” Lerner said.

“Because so many of these challenges cross multiple agencies,

it’s really important for agency leadership and congressional leadership to come together to try and identify the root causes of these issues and… identify ways to help them.”